


Jasmine's place

by Keenir



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, I'd say Ozai's an Unreliable Narrator but..., Pre-Series, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>One can only wonder how the Fire Nation's fortunes might've been improved (at least where the Siege was concerned) if they hadn't lost the Peninsula.</p></blockquote>





	Jasmine's place

While the turtleduck cobbs showed off their plated finery to the turtleduck hens, Ursa had tea in the same gardens with Iroh.

"What about the Lady Yu?" Ursa asked.

Sipping his tea, Iroh then said, "No."

Trying not to roll her eyes at one of the few people to outrank her fiancé, Ursa said only, "Please, assure me that you have a better reason than 'she cannot distinguish one tea from another.' Her conversational abilities are better than most."

"Undoubtedly. But her grasp of what I consider to be truly important, is not as great as I would prefer."

Ursa groaned at that. "Given that there are no women in the Caldera to meet that measurement, _High Prince Iroh_ , this leaves us in a quandary." _Not that I'm beginning to regret accepting this challenge from Iroh's and Ozai's mother, but I'm beginning to think we're all going to end up spinsters._ Because, by a never-undone law centuries and centuries ago, the elder sibling had to marry first, before the younger siblings could; for the sanity of all in the Fire Nation, that law applied only to members of the royal family.

"We still have time," was all Iroh said to that. "Things may change."

Taking an abrupt interest in the contents of her own teacup, Ursa did not let any blushing through to her cheeks or throat. _He did not mean it like that,_ she reminded herself. _And even if he did, that is moot._

Iroh refilled his cup. _I should not say such things, open-ended as they are, particularly when they could be interpreted in many ways by the listening mind. Particularly Ursa's._ 'You are the only man I trust with my fiancé unsupervised' Ozai had once informed Iroh. Technically their father was disqualified only because he went nowhere without either his wife or a consultation of priests.

Everyone else thought it had been a snub (though knew better than to voice that thought), or a sharp insult (ditto).

Iroh took it in the complimentary manner he knew Ozai had meant it: _Through the calculations of the Fire Priests and the declaration of our father, it was determined that Ursa would make a finer wife for my brother Ozai than for myself._

 _But first I must find a bride. Someone able to rise to my side when I succeed our father as Fire Lord_ , and he inhaled, drawing the steam into himself from his tea. _Perhaps I will look to the Provinces or the Colonies, since the Caldera clearly has no women of my caliber._ "What of your own tribe, Ursa?" Iroh inquired.

Ursa hesitated - even with the degree of familiarity Ozai and Iroh permitted her, this was dangerous ground she was about to tread on. "I suspect your mother the Fire Lady would prefer no more diving girls enter your Royal Family." 'Diving girls', one of the terms which arose from the Northern Fire Tribe, a nickname for themselves, whose land had more volcanoes underwater than above, and where flames could not drown.

_As the other Provinces have nothing to recommend them, the Colonies it is then..._

* * *

**THE NEXT MORNING:**

"Thank you for accompanying me to the docks, Brother," Iroh said to Ozai, as they led the procession of his supplies down to the warship which would take Prince Iroh to the Fire Nation Colonies. Beneath them, their Resplendent Goannamounts raced forwards as quickly as ever, even as muted as the beasts were in this off-season.

"One day, I will step off our Islands, and I will leave a great mark of my own," Ozai stated.

Iroh laughed and, had he been nearer, would have ruffled his younger brother's hair. "Of that, I have no doubt. Perhaps I can sway Father to permit me to appoint you my senior field commander."

Ozai was about to reply gladly to that, but then he remembered and sighed. "But first you have to get married." _How irksome it is that even Father puts the entire military machine of our great nation on hold, all so Iroh may find a bride._

"I do," Iroh agreed.

They continued downslope toward the docks, up until there was an accident. A goannamount moving swiftly in one direction, perpendicular to a cart full of jars of honey. The outcome was predictable and dripping a mess onto the street.

Physically unharmed, Ozai and Iroh circled their goannamounts to see what would happen. "You Will Pay!" was barked at them by one of the honeycarters, the one who appeared in command of this cart.

Ozai looked at Iroh, more amused than anything... _Though I suspect my brother is horrified at all that honey which could have gone into tea, now pooling on the road._ "Are you addressing us?" Ozai asked the merchant.

"I am...oh," and the merchant dipped down, though the failure to go into a kowtow was understandable even to Ozai: _that would send him into the honey, which would prompt slipping and falling and further mess and bother to our schedule._

Another cart of honey caught up to them, and the man in charge of it said "Daughter, why do you rush on-" and he at least kowtowed once, keeping out of the honeyed part of the road. "Noble Princes, what an honor -"

"This is your daughter, then?" Iroh asked.

The man gave his daughter a look of both horror and what-did-you-do-now?...Ozai recognizing it from his own father. To the princes, he said, "This is, yes, and -"

"Rise," Iroh said. "Honesty comes from the breath."

Ozai snorted. _Sometimes you invent good aphorisms...and sometimes you spout things just because you know nobody will naysay claims made by either of us._

Iroh asked the merchants, "Has your daughter sworn a vendetta against us?"

_And sometimes you say things to see who faints._

The man pulled his daughter's hat back so it reclined among the many knots of her hair and thus showed off his daughter's face.

 _Is he pleading for mercy?_ Ozai wondered, confused. _Certainly, I've seen more attractive turtleducks. Hm, perhaps he sends his daughter into vulturebee hives for their honey? How else to explain the roughness of her facial features?_

"I intended no such reception, your honors," the daughter said. "My intention was purely legal - you knocked over my cart and thereby broke my jars of honey. You have thereby harmed my livelihood." _And by the traditional laws of our Nation, confirmed and reinforced by Lord Sozin himself, that places me firmly in the right and entitled to recompense from even a member of the royal family._

"In that case," Iroh said, "gather up the jars and the pieces of jars, and bring them to the Palace. They will pay you twice what you would have been paid in the Caldera's markets."

"And the jars?" she asked.

Her father looked like he was about to hide his face behind his hands.

Iroh chuckled. "And they will supply you with new jars. Is there anything else you would wish to demand of me?"

"No, Fire Prince," she said.

Smiling, "What is your family?" Ozai asked.

"Yu, Fire Prince."

"A relation to our Caldera's Yu family?"

"Distant relations," her father said.

 _As you are younger than the daughter Ursa had proposed,_ "What is your name, Yu's Youngest?" Iroh asked.

"My name is Jasmine," she replied, knowing that, strictly speaking, she should have only given her name and that alone.

"Do you drink?"

Ozai bit back a groan, though not entirely sure - _Is it at my brother's sudden enthusedness to her name, or at the question he asks as soon as he knows her name?_

"Surely the Royal Heir Presumptive does not care to know my beverage preferences," Jasmine said.

"Surely the Fire Prince may ask whatever he wishes," Iroh countered.

"Surely not."

Ozai blinked, then watched his elder brother to see what Iroh would do in reaction to that presumption.

Jasmine was not finished: "Surely the Fire Prince can _command_ whatever he wishes."

Iroh processed that reaction, before he said, "An understandable if rarely-given reply, young lady. Thus I will _ask_ that you join me for tea in the Palace Gardens this afternoon."

"And what would be rained down upon my father's house if I failed to arrive, eldest Fire Prince?" Jasmine asked.

 _Not caring to let the unspoken hang threateningly overhead, I see,_ Ozai mused.

"Nothing," Iroh said. "You have my word - I, Prince Iroh, heir of the Fire Nation, knower of the Secrets of the Comet. Nothing shall befall you or your family or their holdings, regardless of what you decide." To Ozai, "I believe we should return home, Brother, lest we be late for lunch." To Jasmine, "Until I see you next," he bid her farewell.

 _So much for him making a tour of the Colonies,_ Ozai thought.

* * *

**THAT EVENING:**

"She did not come?" the Fire Lady asked.

"She did not," Ursa said as she followed along slightly beside and a tad behind the Fire Lady. _Perhaps she'll tell me her name when I birth her grandchildren, but I somehow doubt that_.

"And my sons' reactions?"

"Ozai was affronted that anyone would stand up his brother, and Iroh refused to stop pacing," Ursa said. "He also rambled through a great many possible reasons why Jasmine was not in attendance."

"And you?"

Ursa said nothing.

"Your thoughts, please," the Fire Lady said neutrally.

"From what I know of the events," Ursa said, "Iroh provided Jasmine with an assurance that nothing would happen, and thus she found other things to do with her time."

"Hmm. As the empty hand gets my son nowhere, I think it best we set the stick to one side...I have a desire to use the sweetened potatowheat."

_Proverbially, right?_

"This garden was the grounds where my predecessor lived while I was Fire Lady," she said to Ursa. "My sons played here in all their enthusiasm, with my mother as hostess. One day, I myself will live here, and I will be hostess over my own visiting grandchildren," giving a glance at Ursa's belly, as if checking that Ursa and Ozai weren't rushing things. "But for now, as my predecessor is no longer amongst us, I must do both her duties in here and my own in the Palace."

Ursa waited, certain she was going to get to the point eventually.

"Have you gone to speak with this girl, Ursa?"

"I was going to go in the morning, to remind her of her -"

"Duty? Obligation?" the Fire Lady chuckled. "Oh, Ursa, don't make that face - I recall we had to invoke your grandparents before you would consent to leave your village."

"I..." _I had a life there, in my village, with those I loved and those who loved me. But that was my old life, and I resolved to not linger in memories of there._ "Thus, I know better and sharper than -" and stopped herself, realizing what she had very nearly implied.

This only amused her future mother-in-law. "Better than we who have lived in the Caldera and been at arms-reach throughout our lives? Sozin's daughter takes no offense, child; truthfully, I would have preferred someone besides my father's finest general, strapping and poetic as he could be." She considered something while a hummingshrike flitted before her; when it had gone, she said, "We shall go now. The dark is the best time to illuminate matters. Together, we shall sway this girl."

* * *

**THE EVE BEFORE IROH'S WEDDING:**

He stopped her in the long hallway. With a single gesture, Iroh had his bodyguard each take one of Ursa's bodyguard-maids by the wrist and escort them to the end of the hallway to wait. Ursa looked at Iroh, feeling a wary fear that she hadn't felt for a long while now. _I may not be a firebender, Iroh, but I will not be defeated with anything but difficulty._

"How?" he asked.

Ursa relaxed, if only fractionally.

"How did you persuade Jasmine to marry me? Before you answer, know that I know that she has no interest in becoming royalty or having access to the riches thereof."

"You are mostly correct, Prince Iroh," Ursa said, now relaxed. "I spoke with the young lady, and she said to me," _and to your mother_ , "things that indicate her scholarly mind. She truly does not care if she becomes Fire Lady one day, but she was not against the degree of freedom of travel she would have as your wife." _Though it was telling, what her younger sister asked of us as we prepared to leave that night: 'are you taking my sister Jasmine because she fails at being social?'_

"Battlefields," Iroh said. "She wishes to follow me from one to another?"

"Even your father does not fight in every season," Ursa reminded him gently. "There are things she wishes to study, ruins to investigate. Theories to test, texts to decipher."

"So I am an opportunity, a tool. Nothing more."

Ursa fixed him with a sharp look. "We are all tools. What matters is what we do while we are useful." _I have every confidence I will be useful, while doing what I please. What worries me is all the fuss the Fire Lord's Fire Priests made over my being descended from Avatar Roku...only to arrange my marriage to the secondborn Fire Prince._

* * *

**A YEAR LATER:**

"Can you not sleep?" Iroh asked, seeing her as much in shadow as candlelight. From their bed, he watched her pace across the breadth of their bedroom.

"Not...tonight," Jasmine said. "I suspect there's been a quickening, and your parents will soon enough be grandparents."

Iroh breathed a sigh of relief, collapsing back onto the mattress - _the two of us have been restricted to the Palace until she bears an heir, and only then..._

"I'm sure the battlefield misses you too, husband," she said.

Frowning, Iroh sat back up. "Something troubles you, wife. What is it?"

"Something I thought of while I was going over military records."

_It should be reassuring how at home and at ease she is in the royal library. But something tells me her argument will not be a pleasant one. On the other hand, when she argues passionately regarding something, the two of us end up..._

Jasmine continued: "The entire warplan for the Fire Nation is to return the Avatar to be reborn as a citizen of our nation," she said. "Only the strategy is falsely assumed, as the Avatar would have to train in all four Nations anyway, which would force him to leave and loose any loyalties he had to our nation." _Perhaps Sozin or Azulon might have tried holding out the sweetened potatowheat, convincing an Avatar of any Nation to join him._

"What??" Iroh asked, his mind not sure which was worse - the heresy she was spouting, or the possible treason.

Jasmine rolled her eyes. "Even a cursory examination of history demonstrates this, husband. Avatar Roku, Fire Nation; Avatar unknown, Air Nation; and now the brunt of our military is and has been bearing down against the Earth Nation."

"The Water Tribes..." Iroh began to object, and then he considered her point... "have only been pursued just enough to keep our navy from wasting away while the Earth Kingdom is dealt with. You're more perceptive than my father's Generals."

 _Not moreso than your father and his inner circle of officers and Fire Priests, surely._ "My father is a Pai Sho master. One of the things I learned from him teaching me the game, was how to examine everything from multiple angles."

Iroh looked away. "My father wished to instruct me in Pai Sho, Jasmine, once our engagement and wedding were arranged. I refused - that was the game Ozai would play with him following Ozai's betrothal." _And Brother had few enough advantages over me, where our father's favor was concerned; I was happy to keep avoiding the game._

Pinching the bridge of her nose, _Just when I begin thinking yours is a normal family, Iroh, with graspable family dynamics like all the rest of us...I learn things like how in your family, Pai Sho is only taught or played by men who are engaged or married._ "I could teach you," Jasmine offered.

"You would teach me a man's game?" Iroh objected.

"And what would that make you?" she rebutted mildly.

"An ignorant, unready for the throne," he said.

"Because you don't know how to play the game?"

"It is one of the things Ozai has in his favor," Iroh said.

"I promise not to teach you how to be a master of the game, then," Jasmine said.

"Very well," Iroh said, taking a seat across the board from her.

* * *

**SOME YEARS LATER:**

The Peninsula was an oddity in most ways, and even the earthbenders didn't deny that.

While it had had the highest percentage of earthbenders in the Earth Kingdom, it was also the site of numerous stone structures which had neither been carved nor raised by bending. That had caught Jasmine's interest.

It was firmly in Fire Nation control, administered by the sandbenders - loyal to the Fire Nation (embodied by Iroh) and firm enemies of the Earth Kingdom (embodied by Ba Sing Se). Topsoil and sand blown in from the more arid regions, meant the sandbenders were never far from something useful - as a weapon or as a tool.

Peninsular harbors, once carved into the rocky shore by waterbenders an age ago, now hosted one of the Fire Nation's grander armadas.

Lu Ten was presently back at the Capital, being watched by his aunt and uncle, playing with his cousin Zuko, and being tutored by sages. Of course, he was also tutored by sages when he lived with his parents, be that in the Capital or out in the field.

His parents were happy, content, and succeeding in both their fields - the conquest of the eastern side of the Earth Kingdom, slowed only by Ba Sing Se's walls themselves...and the ruins of a dozen bygone peoples. Iroh and Jasmine were not showy, were not extravagant, and often did nothing more than wrap an arm around the other, lean against one another, and breathe together in unison.

* * *

**A MONTH LATER:**

"He _knew_..." Ozai muttered, glaring at the wall reserved for burning and charring. "I tried to play with the boy, to move the pieces around to promote good humor, and what did my nephew do? He moved the pieces in accordance with the rules of Pai Sho."

"Perhaps we should be thankful he didn't know he had to be covert," Ursa suggested from where she was reading on their bed. _Still, at least we sent him back to his father with a good gift - Iroh would be suspicious if we didn't appear to remember his birthday._

Ozai made a noise.

 _Would you feel better if we refused to watch your brother's son from here onwards, Ozai? Not a question to be asked, I know. Still, at least you don't have my father's temper...or his habit of spitting lightning._ Ursa focused her attention mostly on the goings-on in her book, a peripheral amount aware of what her husband was doing.

Even so, he caught her by surprise:

"Ursa..." Ozai said, bowing his head and bending his back and a knee -

 _More than he has lowered himself to anyone but his parents,_ Ursa knew.

\- "I ask you to instruct me."

"In Pai Sho?" she asked. "Apologies, good dear husband, but I have no clue how to play that game." _I think **maybe** three people on my entire island knew how_.

"I know," Ozai said. "But I am not asking for you to teach me how to play Pai Sho."

"Then...?"

"With the exception of my own, the past eight Fire Nation dynasties have all had a tactician from the Northern Fire Tribe. I am asking you to show me how to outmaneuver my brother."

Ursa considered the Pai Sho tiles, her mind adapting games from the north to what she had at hand. "Substitution, until a proper tankboard can be made. This one looks like it will be unchanged," holding a circular tile with a picture of wheat inked onto its flat side. Tapping that against a more abstract image on another tile, "This will have to be a ship; its fishermen - soldiers - have to stay on board, and you have to feed them.

"What is this?" Ursa asked, setting those down and picking up a tile whose inking was almost all outside the shape.

Taking her words as a confirmation that she would help, "A white lotus," Ozai said. "Father said it was once the most powerful of all the tiles, but that was long ago."

"And now?"

"Now it is only used as an opening move in unnecessarily complicated gambits."

* * *

**TWO YEARS LATER:**

"Explain it to me," Iroh said, his son standing beside Iroh's chair. "How it happened, every detail."

Zhao lowered his head further. "As I have said, General, once we located the lost city, we secured it and made our way into it. A massive spirit appeared, in the form of an owl, but it didn't interfere in our explorations... Until everyone's guards were down, when the spirit attacked us. Our soldiers struggled valiantly, but to no avail. I tried to get your wife out, General, but she refused to permit me to give my life so that she would survive."

Iroh was silent.

Lu Ten spoke instead. "How? What did the owl...spirit...what did it do?"

Zhao looked to Iroh, who nodded. "Wild beasts can and will savage the flesh," Zhao said. "Spirits are worse," and waited.

The General sat and thought, considering. "For your efforts, I will not be demoting you," Iroh said. "For your failure, I'm having you transferred," and recalled something Jasmine had said about the long-term war plans... "You will be with the Fire Nation Navy from now on.

"I understand, General," said Zhao, already having an idea how this could be used with the information he had gathered in that buried place.

Just before Iroh could dismiss Zhao, Lu Ten spoke again: "What of the sandbenders? Where were they?"

"They had refused to go into the city with us - at the time, we thought it superstition, and let them remain outside. But when I barely escaped the city, all but one of the sandbenders had already taken flight."

 _They abandoned us, left Jasmine and the men to a doom._ Iroh dismissed Zhao, and said to Lu Ten "You have a plan?"

"More of a desire, Father," Lu Ten said. "The sandbenders have betrayed us. They betrayed _Mother_. We cannot let that stand. Let me take men to their settlement and deal with the traitors."

_Some of those sandbenders were your best friends, favored playmates as your mother studied and I trained soldiers for the next campaign. Your playmates' parents were our allies, having thrown their lots in in support of the Fire Nation against Ba Sing Se. We treated them as though they were one of our own, we counted them as our friends, and thought they held us to be their friends._

_...and this is their response. Strategy be cindered, then._ "Go, Lu Ten, my son. Shatter their communities, scatter their numbers - but no bloodshed."

Lu Ten nodded. "I will make them _fear,_ Father. I will make them _rue_ \- the day of their betrayal shall ever be remembered by them, I shall see to it."

* * *

Most of the sandbenders fled and took refuge in the distinctly sandless Ba Sing Se. The few who remained outside the city walls, it was known by all that they would never be more than a gnat to any present or future armies.

* * *

**Some time later......**

He read the message once more, his eyes wishing they could go as numb as his insides felt, as his mind seemed, as his fingers couldn't feel.

**_ADDRESSED TO FIRE PRINCE IROH, HEIR PRESUMPTIVE,_ **

**_It falls to this humble Corporal to inform your regal self that your gloried son Lu Ten has fallen. He led with wisdom and his honorable actions were met by the dishonorable tricks of the earthbenders. A squadron was sent in to retrieve his noble body, shielded by two further squadrons countering the assaults of the earthbender soldiers of the city. The hallowed body of Fire Prince Lu Ten has been prepared for transport and sent to the Palace. Our division and our nation mourns with you, sage prince._ **

Iroh considered crumpling the message paper up in one fist. Considered setting it aflame. Considered returning to Ba Sing Se and personally tearing down what remained of those infernal walls.

 _That would be vengeance,_ he knew. _That is what propelled my son forwards, and I saw nothing wrong with that...and now I have lost them both._ Any steam he had, cooled.

Out the corner of one eye, Iroh noticed something. Looking towards it, he recognized it instantly, a plan infusing his mind, (seeping) as he pocketed the thing and stood, turning toward the entrance of his capital tent. As soon as he set foot outside, he declared, "Ready the men."

"Shall we make another assault, General?" one of his lieutenants asked.

"No. We shall bring my son's body home, and we shall do so together," Iroh said.

"How many men shall stay at the walls?" another lieutenant asked.

"None. We have all fought and bled and drank together - thus I will slight none by omitting them from this."

Both lieutantants nodded and bowed and hurried to make it so.

Iroh smiled, though it never reached his eyes. In his hand, in his pocket, he gripped a lotus tile.

**Author's Note:**

> One can only wonder how the Fire Nation's fortunes might've been improved (at least where the Siege was concerned) if they hadn't lost the Peninsula.


End file.
